The OEdipe of Corneille is in all respects unworthy of its great author.  The poet considering, as he states in his introduction, that the subject of OEdipus tearing out his eyes was too horrible to be presented before ladies, qualifies its terrors by the introduction of a love intrigue betwixt Theseus and Dirce.  The unhappy propensity of the French poets to introduce long discussions upon la belle passion, addressed merely to the understanding, without respect to feeling or propriety, is nowhere more ridiculously displayed than in “OEdipe.”  The play opens with the following polite speech of Theseus to Dirce: 

  N’ecoutez plus, madame, une pitie cruelle,
  Qui d’un fidel amant vous ferait un rebelle: 
  La gloire d’obeir n’a rien que me soit doux,
  Lorsque vous m’ordonnez de m’eloigner de vous. 
  Quelque ravage affreux qu’etale ici la peste,
  L’absence aux vrais amans est encore plus funeste;
  Et d’un si grand peril l’image s’offre en vain,
  Quand ce peril douteux epargne un mal certain.
                                   Act premiere, Scene premiere.

It is hardly possible more prettily to jingle upon the peril douteux, and the mal certain; but this is rather an awkward way of introducing the account of the pestilence, with which all the other dramatists have opened their scene.  OEdipus, however, is at once sensible of the cause which detained Theseus at his melancholy court, amidst the horrors of the plague: 

  Je l’avais bien juge qu’ un interet d’amour
  Fermait ici vos yeux aux perils de ma cour.

OEdipo conjectere opus est—­it would have been difficult for any other person to have divined such a motive.  The conduct of the drama is exactly suitable to its commencement; the fate of OEdipus and of Thebes, the ravages of the pestilence, and the avenging of the death of Laius, are all secondary and subordinate considerations to the loves of Theseus and Dirce, as flat and uninteresting a pair as ever spoke platitudes in French hexameters.  So much is this the engrossing subject of the drama, that OEdipus, at the very moment when Tiresias is supposed to be engaged in raising the ghost of Laius, occupies himself in a long scene of scolding about love and duty with Dirce; and it is not till he is almost bullied by her off the stage, that he suddenly recollects, as an apology for his retreat,

  Mais il faut aller voir ce qu’a fait Tiresias.

Considering, however, the declamatory nature of the French dialogue, and the peremptory rule of their drama, that love, or rather gallantry, must be the moving principle of every performance, it is more astonishing that Corneille should have chosen so masculine and agitating a subject, than that he should have failed in treating it with propriety or success.